Can you hold a soul?
by IntrovertedNotAsocial
Summary: Fragile Dreams one-shot, about Seto and his grandfather/guardian. And the day that changed everything.


I apologize for not making so much sense - this is kind of all over the place... Heh.

* * *

Without telling him, I had run out of the observatory with nothing but my locket and notebook to go draw by the well. That's what I had always done – it wasn't the clean wet grass or the delicate butterflies there or anything like that. (If it was, I wasn't about to admit that to myself. I was grown, after all.) When I sat on the ledge of the well just to draw the ants, I felt like there was a chance I would remember all of it.

I had few memories, whether they were of people or places I had been. The reason I didn't know Grandpa's name, I thought, was because he had never told me; in truth, I wasn't sure if he had.

When I raced out, eager to get to the well to write down my feelings, I hadn't told him that I left. He was napping out on the porch, like a beaver I had seen once just lying behind a log. I had assumed that beaver was old and sick.

I couldn't know for sure, though - I had seen few beavers, almost as few as I had seen people – the existence I knew was merely Grandpa and myself and the occasional cat or garden snake. Rabbits might creep up on our observatory, but never a traveler. Who would want to stay with the crackpot old astronomer and his apprentice in their ramshackle observatory? But I digress. I had left without telling him, assuming I would be back before he would wake.

I hadn't known that I would be on the well's ledge for hours. After getting caught up in a conversation with my reflection in the well – sometimes I wonder if I'm going crazy… I can talk to my own reflection for hours, like a real person. I guess that's how I adapted to life as a hermit. The stark realization of the time came. I ran backfeet thumping through this grass like my heartbeat when I remembered how worried he would be.

I arrived at the observatory – he was there in his chair still, not moving at all. Still asleep, I had assumed, and gone on to hide in the library with one of the many cats that was lying around.

It's funny, you know. Only my worst memories are the ones I can't forget. It's not as though they're etched into my brain. That would be a living hell. Instead, I tend to relive them, over and over. I play them in my head, placing myself in every role as I try to imagine it from the other side. I had left him that day to go draw, when I arrived back home several hours later he was still asleep…

The next morning I knew he wasn't going to wake up. I didn't cry. I couldn't bring myself to shed a single tear over the man who had raised me since… oh, who knows when. I couldn't even remember his name. My heart is a strange and cold thing, not remembering that which is most important to my brain.

We buried him in the back. The cats and I. I grabbed the shovel and dictionary and buried him where the dogs wouldn't – couldn't - dig him up. I had to bury him with his eyeglasses and dictionary, that's for sure… the cats and I used a map of the stars as a gravestone. It was a thick vintage map. One of his favorites.

I knew I was responsible for his death, and yet I felt little true remorse. It was more of an expected melancholy, not mourning him properly. He had always warned me never to go to the well without telling him, that there were men that hunted down people my age to run tests on. Cruel, savage tests, not like the acupuncture he performed when I got sick. Tests where I would die.

Come to think of it, we almost always spoke of death. Of the afterlife, of God and subjects of that nature. He taught me not to fear dying, but to fear what was to come after. That the stars were once rumored to have been spirits that had been lucky enough to float up.

"Seto… I'm a bit worried." He would say, chuckling.

I would open my eyes at him as wide as I could… they "shone like stars", and that was what he liked. "You? Worried? Why?"

He would whisper ominously through his wistful smile. "There are things I've done that I'm not proud of. It only makes me wonder… Where will I go when this old body gets too old?"

"No, don't say that… you're not going to wither so long as I'm here…"

"Ah, Seto, you're too earnest for your own good. I'll die one of these days… I just hope you're not around to see it. "

Then he would stare off into space, chasing the memories he remembered but wish to forget.

I learned to mimic his pose, chasing the memories that I wished to remember but had long forgotten. We were the perfect pair, he and I. We got along surprisingly well, considering the age gap.

I had held true to his wish – when he died, I had not been there. Regrettably, I had missed his final breath, the last words of wisdom he could share with me as dying men often do. The last words of truth he would utter before letting his soul flutter away into the darkness.

Is a soul something that can flutter, like a dragonfly or a leaf in the wind? No, I don't think so. If a soul – his soul – were a material thing, it wouldn't be flying. He was far too practical to sprout wings and fly away. His soul was like sand, drizzling away slowly. Almost slowly enough so I could catch it, but far too fluid to hold. Not that I would catch his soul, anyway. My fumbling fingers would merely bruise it, making his way even more difficult.

Souls are probably majestic to watch. I hope I get the chance to watch a soul melt away into oblivion. It must be an amazing and terrible thing to watch, like a fire eating away at a forest. Truly beautiful in the way that it can be truly terrifying. I can't imagine something like that. Perhaps no one can watch it happen, just like no one can watch grass grow or flowers unfold or the dew collect in the morning.

…I don't think I have a soul.


End file.
